Joi T Arcand’s ‘Never Surrender’ in Queen’s Gazette

Armand Garnet Ruffo discusses Joi T Arcand’s piece ‘Never Surrender’ from her exhibition ᑿᔭᐢᐠ ᐅᑌᐦᑕᒼ at Central Art Garage for Queen’s University.

In the summer of 1985, if you were listening to the radio or watching MuchMusic, you inevitably heard or saw Corey Hart singing his hit “Never Surrender.” They are the same words that resonated not long ago in Nehiyaw text-based artist Joi T. Arcand’s art work, in which she takes Hart’s “Never Surrender” lyrics and translates them into Cree syllabics to honour her own heritage, solidarity-building among Indigenous communities and to acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples are still here on Turtle Island.

“Never Surrender.” These are the words that Indigenous people still voice today in fighting oppression and to press governments to provide what ordinary Canadians take for granted, like clean water, health care and access to education.

In 1985, when the song was released after some 150 years of disempowerment and genocidal tactics like residential schools and the Pass System, Indigenous peoples finally had their constitutional rights confirmed just three years earlier, in 1982.

But what did these rights mean for a people still attending residential schools, still living in abject poverty? What did it mean if the legal system still held to the fiction of Terra Nullius, Christopher Columbus and the Doctrine of Discovery?

There is an irony here. This is a celebrated song by a white, male Canadian singer whose moody music video suggests it is centred in his limited and privileged perspective on teenage angst. Yet, through an Indigenous lens, the lyric “And if your path won’t lead you home/ You can never surrender” is given the weight of history.

Armand Garnet Ruffo, Queen’s University